Publisher DTP Crew

This is one of many short video segments which will be added to the Digital Tipping Point (DTP) archive. In this segment, Patrick talks about the importance of open standards and open source code. He says that right now, many people might not be interested in basic computer issues like open code and open standards. But he says that as more people become aware of these issues, the more they will care. He draws an analogy to writing a letter to a friend with paper and pen. He says that you shouldn't have to ask permission to compose a letter that way, and the same rules should apply with email or a word processing program. He says that closed standards and closed code could inhibit the free flow of information.

He says that some proprietary software companies, such as Microsoft, sometimes hide the ball. OpenOffice.org lets him create letters on his home computer, because the OpenOffice.org community releases its code and its standards are open. Microsoft, on the othere hand, does not do the same. Refering to proprietary software he owns, he says "I bought it, I should be able to get my money's worth." But, he says, someone else is pretending that they own his bought and paid for software.

Patrick also starts to tell a story about the importance of open source software to democracy. He begins by telling that just before this video was shot, he cam back from a weekend with other elected officials, academics, and journalists, who met to talk about the declining interest of the electorate in elections. He will pick that theme up on the next segment.

tape id = e-dv045_scotland_04_patrick_harvey_003.mpg

By the way, you might notice that I have skipped from patrick_harvey_001.mpg to patrick_harvey_003.mpg. The reason for that is that the first segment was mostly just Paul Donahue testing the camera while I was getting Patrick familiar with our particular interview process. So segments 001.mpg and 002.mpg were combined in segment 001.mpg. There is no gap in the record of Patrick's interviews, even though it might seem to be so.

The DTP will be many, many films created by the global open source video community about how open source is changing their lives. We, the DTP crew, are submitting this footage for anyone to rip, mix, and burn under the Creative Commons Attribute - ShareAlike license. We welcome edits, transcriptions, graphics, music, and animation contributions to the film. Please send a link for any contributions to Christian Einfeldt at einfeldt at gmail.com.

Or, if you would like to contribute by directly transcribing this particular video segment, you can do so by going here

http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Tape_045

and typing the audio as you hear it into the wiki. Please be sure to add the transcription for this segment under segment 003. You can find other ways to contribute by going to our wiki front page here:

http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Thanks for viewing our video!

Contact Information Christian Einfeldt, einfeldt at g mail dot com